A few scattered thoughts here: There were periods in my early career when I was hyperproductive. Every time I burned out, unable to work for months afterwards.

A few scattered thoughts here: There were periods in my early career when I was hyperproductive. Every time I burned out, unable to work for months afterwards. It had a cost in terms of physical and mental health that in retrospect was not worth paying. It also often didn't come out of good places in me. Self-medicating with excess work is not better than other sorts of self-medication, even if society does like it better. The reality is that you can only do so much. You aren't other people, and you can't know what's going on with them, especially when they work at presenting a particular socially approved image to you. The best you can do is pay attention to what works for you and optimize for what matters to you. One thing that has been helpful to me was an Adam Savage comment on obsession in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YqO5T8KTnn0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YqO5T8KTnn0 He talked about deciding what he was willing to be obsessed by was very helpful. I've been most productive when I've gotten obsessed by something, and I want to choose things where that's possible. But I need to do it in healthy ways. So the way I think about it at the moment, I'm not trying to directly improve my productivity. I'm trying to find the things where I can get obsessed sustainably. Hope that helps, and I'm glad to answer questions.